The rest of us had been standing there like statues during the interchange, and Dwight suddenly took a hand:
“We may as well sit down,” he suggested gruffly. “And allow me to finish the introductions: Mr. Baker, Miss O’Toole... and he assures me that Baker is actually his name. Senor Pasqual Morales, Burke and Baker.”
Pasqual moved to Michaela’s side and nodded to us jerkily. His beady black eyes flickered from Burke to me with definite menace. He had a folded newspaper gripped tightly in his right hand, and looked uncomfortable in an ill-fitting suit of blue serge, but his manner plainly indicated that he was determined not to be intimidated by us nor by the unaccustomed luxury of his surroundings.
We all sat down and Dwight rang for cracked ice and more glasses. Burke took a chair in front of Michaela and continued his questioning as though it hadn’t been interrupted:
“Do you make a habit of writing letters to strange American men?”
“But no, Senor Policeman. You make the joke, no?”
“No,” Burke growled. “I want to know why you wrote Young that letter... if you didn’t know him.”
Michaela had a way of opening her eyes wide with child-like simplicity. She used it effectively. “Must I give reasons for letters I write?”
It was parry and riposte, with no advantage to either verbal fencer. Burke shifted his attack:
“You know Young has been murdered?”
“The police told me last night when I called for them to come and take this man away.” She glanced at me with her wide eyes, then back at Burke.
“I have reason to believe your invitation to the hacienda was directly responsible for Young’s death.” Burke hammered the words at her.
She merely looked surprised, but Dwight leaned forward and exclaimed:
“I think you should explain that insinuation, Burke.”
“I’m asking for explanations... not giving them,” Burke told him evenly, without taking his eyes from Michaela’s face.
The servant came with a pitcher of cracked ice and two more glasses. Dwight’s big hands shook as he mixed a drink for his guests from across the border.
“I’m still waiting for an answer,” Burke told Michaela.
She shrugged her shoulders insolently and black lashes came down to shield her eyes. “I think you will wait a long time, Senor Policeman.”
“Aren’t you interested in helping me find the murderer of your father’s old friend?”
That thrust brought Michaela’s eyelashes up. You could almost see her readjusting her mental defences before she answered: “You are smart... for a policeman.”
“Thanks,” Burke acknowledged grimly. “Policemen aren’t always as dumb as detective story writers would have you believe. I know some other things, too. For instance: Do you want to explain what you and your companion were doing up this canyon yesterday afternoon while Leslie Young was getting himself murdered?”
The silence was electric. Dwight’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth. I sensed a furtive movement at my left and I glanced over at Pasqual in time to see his right hand gliding into his coat pocket. He leaned forward tensely, glaring at Burke.
I was as surprised as any of the others. I didn’t see why in hell Burke couldn’t tell me things so I’d be prepared for them beforehand. This was my first intimation that Michaela and Pasqual had been north of the Rio Grande yesterday.
“I have not said we were here.” Michaela sounded uncertain for the first time since the inquisition started.
“But I know you were here. You stopped at a filling station at the mouth of the canyon at two-thirty to inquire your way to the Dwight estate. I have your description and the license number of your car.”
“Perhaps we were coming to visit Mr. Dwight... if we asked the way to his house.”
“Which puts you conveniently at the scene of murder just when it was happening.”
“I cannot help that, Senor Policeman. I did not plan it so.” The girl was getting her second wind.
“Just another coincidence,” Burke muttered bleakly. He swung from her to glare at Pasqual. “Your boy-friend doesn’t happen to be jealous of Americans to whom you write notes, does he?”
Pasqual glared back at him, breathing heavily. His hand was lumped in his pocket and I knew his kind was as dangerous as a coiled diamond-back.
Burke didn’t seem to realize the danger of pushing him too far. He got up and took a step toward the Mexican with outstretched hand. “There’s a law in this country about carrying concealed weapons. Better hand it over, Pasqual, before it goes off and hurts someone.”
There was a long moment while anything might have happened. Then Pasqual’s eyes flickered toward Michaela and he must have received some signal from her for he relaxed visibly. His brown hand came slowly out of his pocket with a snubnosed revolver clutched in his fingers. Burke took it, glanced at it and dropped it in his own pocket.
“Unfortunately, it isn’t a .25,” he said shortly, going back and sitting down.
Michaela finished her highball and stood up. “If this is ended, Senor Policeman, I would like to speak to Mr. Dwight in private.”
“We don’t seem to be making much headway, do we?” Burke stood up with an unabashed smile. “Baker and I will get out of the way, but I’m going to ask you not to leave the grounds, Miss O’Toole. We’ll continue our question-and-answer game later.” He nodded at me and strolled toward the door.
I went out with him. Dwight followed us and slammed the sliding doors together.
“Why the hell do you keep hiding things from me?” I asked him.
“Such as what?” He was leading the way toward the front of the house and he sounded pleased with himself.
“Such as Michaela and her shadow being here yesterday afternoon.”
“I wasn’t at all sure of it myself. It was more or less a shot in the dark. It’s one of the things Jelcoe turned up in the course of his investigation yesterday afternoon. The filling station man remembered the beautiful girl in a car with a Mexican license.”
He stopped a maid and asked her where the butler was. She took us to a curtained alcove off the front hall where the butler was relaxed in a deep chair with the top buttons of his uniform pants loosened. He jumped up and looked flustered when we barged in, but Burke waved him back to his chair.
“Just checking up on a couple of unimportant items. What time did Miss O’Toole and her companion arrive here yesterday afternoon?”
“I think it was in the neighborhood of three o’clock, sir.”
“Was Mr. Dwight here to receive them?”
“No sir... that is, I couldn’t make any definite statement concerning Mr. Dwight’s whereabouts, sir.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Merely that I am not accustomed to inquire closely into the master’s movements, sir.”
“But you showed the guests in, didn’t you? Give me a straight answer. Was Dwight here at the time or wasn’t he?”
“I really cannot say, sir.”
“Goddamn it!” Jerry Burke’s fist pounded down and an ink-well jumped an inch above the desk in front of the butler. “Did you announce them or did you just leave them standing at the door?”
The butler stood up and faced Burke with the dignity that only a bloated belly can give a man. “I showed them to the drawing room, sir, and sent a maid to summon Mr. Hardiman who was resting in his room.”
“Then they came to see Hardiman... not Dwight?”
“Quite correct, sir.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“You did not ask me, sir.”
A low giggle from the hall outside interrupted this interesting dialogue. It was followed by a muffled voice:
“Did you ever hear anything so utterly dumb in all your life? Even our butler twists him around his finger.”